The digital currency hit a high of $4,867 Monday, its highest since Sept. 2 and before the China crackdown, according to data from industry website CoinDesk. Bitcoin last traded nearly 5 percent higher on the day at $4,821.
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Bauerle also attributed bitcoin’s gains to indications that more developers are adopting an upgrade called SegWit, while the Chinese crackdown on bitcoin has opened opportunities for digital currency enthusiasts in other parts of the world.
Bitcoin has had a rocky few weeks. It hit an all-time high on September 2 of $5,013.91, before declining sharply to below $3,000 in the next two weeks.
… earlier this year, bitcoin underwent a split or “fork” which created another cryptocurrency called bitcoin cash.
That split happened due to technical changes in the underlying technology behind bitcoin, known as the blockchain. But that change, which is currently being implemented, could be rejected by a large section of the bitcoin community, which could actually lead to another fork.
“The forthcoming bitcoin fork in November will result in greater volatility and risk for this new asset class,” Menant said.
Uh oh, a split in the bitcoin network! We should be super-scared of this — unlike how we react to, say, a stock split — and also ignore the ~200 previous times Bitcoin was declared imminently-dead for some reason or another (the past instance, of course, being the first SegWit fork).